A blog of questionshttp://zorkhun.com/wp
Tue, 20 Feb 2018 22:55:08 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4http://zorkhun.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/cropped-Monte-1993-croped-3-32x32.jpgA blog of questionshttp://zorkhun.com/wp
3232An autopsy of the dialog – part threehttp://zorkhun.com/wp/2018/02/19/autopsy-dialog-part-three/
http://zorkhun.com/wp/2018/02/19/autopsy-dialog-part-three/#commentsMon, 19 Feb 2018 18:54:34 +0000http://zorkhun.com/wp/?p=2406The dialog didn’t, doesn’t and won’t die peacefully. Yes, it is still kicking, it is still getting up to feed on the brain of whatever is still alive. The dialog is zombified. The censorship, the lawfare, the protests, the riots, the shouting down of speakers, and the firing of those who get out of line […]

The dialog didn’t, doesn’t and won’t die peacefully. Yes, it is still kicking, it is still getting up to feed on the brain of whatever is still alive. The dialog is zombified.
The censorship, the lawfare, the protests, the riots, the shouting down of speakers, and the firing of those who get out of line are NOT dialogs. The vilification and distortion of our opponents, the “are you saying that…” straw-men arguments and a host of other logical fallacies are all designed to kill the dialog, not to keep it alive. The zombified dialog is pushing us toward a zombified reality.

The arguments are dead

In the early years of the Obama administration, when Glenn Beck was still aspiring for mainstream acceptability, he often played a clip of Andy Stern, then still president of SEIU saying:

“We are trying to use the power of persuasion, and if that doesn’t work,
we use the persuasion of power”

That was about eight years ago. As it turns out, the power of persuasion did not work too well.

The classic Marxist arguments, the class struggle and the workers of the world unite arguments lost their appeal for what remained of its natural audience, the ‘working class’. Sure, some Marxist university professors and their brainwashed acolytes are still buying it, but the argument is not persuasive where it would matter: the traditional power base of the left. Class struggle gave way to identity politics.

Identity politics is losing.
The appeal of feminism is in decline; gays have nothing left to fight for; the transgender movement is quickly losing the attention of the mainstream and Islam has to face a growing opposition to its demands all over the globe. Identity politics is fracturing the left. When you have to put the Muslim barber against the lesbian customer or the Black Lives Matter activists against the gay policemen, you are witnessing the revolution devouring its own children.

The centralization of power argument is losing. The EU, the UN, NATO and a host of other supra-national organizations may have had some appeal when they were created, but that appeal is slowly fading as the costs are becoming more apparent. Any of the international organizations could collapse. The EU is already breaking up (see Brexit) and a financial or monetary crisis could easily end it. The UN and NATO are heavily dependent on the US. A binding referendum could end both. The question is not whether such referendum could or should happen, but the fact that these institutions do not have popular support in the countries they depend on for their existence.
With centralized power comes centralized control and an ever-increasing loss of not only individual but communal and reginal freedom and self determination as well. For most people, the costs are increasingly evident and decreasingly tolerable.

The diversity argument is losing. The left’s framing of the notion as equal outcome makes it a code word for obedience, submission and conformity.
It is also pitted squarely against the notion of merit. Justin Trudeau’s cabinet selection after his election was a spit in the face of the concept of merit.
Multiculturalism is a joke and mass immigration is getting increasingly unpopular. Diversity is NOT a strength.

The income inequality argument is losing. Pickety’s book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” has the dubious (albeit arguable) honor of being the most unread book on amazon. Arguments against income inequality are so poorly formulated that they cannot be taken seriously.

The climate change hysteria is slowly running out of steam. It is dead last of people’s concerns in any number of polls. The science is getting unsettled with a slew of books questioning the ‘settled’ wisdom. Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Sequel” is so desperately bad that it made me feel sorry for him. The environmentalists just cried wolf too many times.

I could continue with a long list of examples, but I am sure you get the point. The problem is that as the left is compensating for the loss of the arguments by becoming increasingly shrill. Instead of becoming more reasonable, it is moving the arguments ever further into the extremes, turning ever more emotional and confrontational, ever less willing to compromise. Ideology is becoming tribal. In this new, tribal world, conflict resolution has to move to a different plane.

The transmogrification of the dialog

By now, the left is way past the power of persuasion, they are relying exclusively on the persuasion of power.
The debates transmogrified into political power-games.

The first battlefront is the Media. Lies, distortions and projections; selective reporting, cover ups and manipulative propaganda are the tools to avoid actual dialog.
The media is partisan, and disproportionately one-sided. Ben Shapiro’s “Primetime Propaganda” would be a good introduction to the subject. While bias in itself is not warfare yet, the active exclusion of opinions and the shunning of people holding them is a betrayal of their supposed principles. The media is supposed to be independent. IT IS NOT.

The world of science and the arts are also hopelessly politicized. The world of science is peppered with taboo subjects, verboten views and a broken peer review process. Certain dialogs cannot take place, certain research subjects cannot be funded and results cannot be published. Professors with certain views do not stand a chance of employment or advancement in academia.

Censorship is not an exclusive domain of the media. Companies and government organizations actively censor the expression of unacceptable opinions within their domain. In some cases, these domains can be quite sizeable. Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc. The worst of these are operating entirely in the dark where the subjects of the censorship do not even know what has been withheld from them.

Lawfare is the most dangerous, as it is already a path to violence. Human rights commission and sharia courts are above-the-law adjudicators of very poorly articulated rights and obligations. “Human rights” laws are fuzzy on purpose to accommodate a wide range of interpretations based on the prevailing political winds at the time of their applications. Their processes provide none of the safeguards of proper legal procedures.

All of the above distortions favour the left. The right (whatever that means) is ready for dialog, it is ready for debate, it is ready to engage, but the goal of the left is not to win the debate – any debate – but to win the war.

Softcore war

When Jordan Peterson made his first few videos protesting the university administration’s re-education requests, the essence of his message was a plea for rational dialog, pointing out that without talk we will be left with violence as the only tool to resolve our conflicts.

And violence we got. Antifa, Black Lives Matter or the Black Bloc are just the tip of the iceberg. Soros is financing about 200 organizations actively sowing discord. Soros wants war. He knows how profitable it can be. He learned it as a teenager in World War II working with his stepfather liquidating the assets of Jews taken to concentration camps.

Leftists don’t seem to understand that using ‘the persuasion of power’ is playing with fire.
They have a patchy record of success, and even their successes are ultimately failures. Yes, they had several successful revolutions and coups, but just as many failures as well. The communists succeeded in underdeveloped countries (Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc.), but failed in the developed world. The most spectacular failure happened in the Weimar Republic in the period 1920-1933. Two books illustrate the story well: “The Coming of the Third Reich” and “Beating the Fascists?” There was a low intensity civil war in Germany and at the start of the conflicts, the left had the upper hand. The parties to the actual physical combats were the communists, the social democrats and the fascists. The communists started it. The fascists won. It can be argued, that the fascists owe their success to the communists. “Liberal Fascism” also have a good chapter on this.

The left is ready for a war. I don’t think they understand the odds, but maybe they do.
I just don’t like my odds of getting caught in the middle of some serious upheaval. I do not want war, I do not want a revolution and I don’t like to see our world moving in that direction.

]]>http://zorkhun.com/wp/2018/02/19/autopsy-dialog-part-three/feed/2An autopsy of the dialog – part twohttp://zorkhun.com/wp/2017/12/20/autopsy-dialog-part-two/
http://zorkhun.com/wp/2017/12/20/autopsy-dialog-part-two/#respondThu, 21 Dec 2017 02:46:49 +0000http://zorkhun.com/wp/?p=2399In my last post I vented my frustration with the sorry state of the left-right dialog. I described the problem, but we are still left with a set of questions: What is the basis of the differences? What makes them so predictable? What stands in the way of productive communication? Political ideology There could be […]

In my last post I vented my frustration with the sorry state of the left-right dialog.
I described the problem, but we are still left with a set of questions:

What is the basis of the differences? What makes them so predictable? What stands in the way of productive communication?

Political ideology

There could be several theories to explain why we cannot talk. We can start with political ideology.
We can blame it on Marx, the Frankfurt school, postmodernism, feminism or the baby boom generation. Any one of those would have a point if not many.

The left of the political spectrum is consistently working on its own empowerment – all over the world. They are importing tax and vote slaves.
They are dismantling the base of their potential opposition (the family and civil society).
They are taking over the command posts of ideology: education, the media and the regulatory bureaucracy.
It is a long struggle, and they are fighting it with a long view. Two steps forward one step back.

The right, at this point, is still on the defensive, but the tides may be turning. There is a growing rebellion against the centralization of power, multiculturalism and open borders; political correctness and identity politics, fake news and fake science. But pushing back, barely holding the line is not a winning strategy.

Unfortunately, the vision of the right is not as persuasive as that of the left.

The left wants a ‘better’ future, the right mainly wants to steer clear of the proven bad ones.The left’s stance is relentless activism, while the right is reactive and their arguments tend to be negative: “socialism is bad, it doesn’t work, it produces misery, it is killing creativity and productivity; in the end it always produces very bad results.” It just does not sound as good as hope and change.

The left MEANS WELL, they have THE BEST INTENTIONS and they refuse to acknowledge the bad results of their ideas and policies.
The right DOES WELL, by any objective measurement, but they never get credit for their actual achievements.

The left projects. Anyone disagreeing with them must have bad intentions (by definition) and they project this belief onto the actions of their opponents. The right deflects. Most of its energy is spent on defending its actual record against the ridiculous accusations of the left.

The two sides are in a constant struggle of talking past each other.

The left talks about the morality of their intent, the right about its abysmal results.
The left talks about the equality of outcome, the right about the equality of opportunity.
The left talks about slicing the pie more equitably, the right talks about making it bigger.
The left talks about positive rights, the right insists on negative ones.

…and I could continue with a long list of fundamental disagreements that makes it impossible for the two sides to have a conversation about particular subjects.

While ideological differences can explain a lot, seeing the conflicts as purely political is cynical. It assumes that people on the two sides understand each other, they just choose the one that suits their personal interest the best. Even if they don’t deserve it, I want to give some credit to the left assuming that most people on either side of the political divide honestly believe in what they stand for. What separates them must be more than just political ideology. It is a difference in how they see the world.

Visions of reality

My all time favourite book on the subject, Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions” lays out in detail the differences between the visions of reality of the left and the right.
His explanation of the constrained (conservative) and the unconstrained (socialist) visions is the best to date. You can find a short description of the two visions in this Wikipedia article. (Now really, go and read it)
The scope of the conflict of visions is far more universal than what is discussed in Sowell’s book.
The ideological differences run deep and go far back in history.
The dichotomy of today’s left and right can be seen in the differences between Lao Tze and Confucius, Plato and Aristoteles. From Platonism versus the empiricism of Aristotle or the heavenly order of Confucius versus the Tao of Lao Tze all the way to the differences between Marx and Mises or Keynes and Hayek.

But with all its amazing insight, Sowell’s book still does not answer the question: why?
Why are we choosing one vision over the other? Understanding the underlying visions of political ideology still does not answer the question of choice. Yes, the visions are distinctly and consistently different, but what makes us take the side we do? Although both sides rationalize their choices the answer must be beyond what we can consider purely rational choice.

Psychology and biology

There is a growing body of evidence that our political differences may be psychological, biological, even genetic. Yes, these three are basically the same, they just represent different degrees of predisposition, or dare I say: determinism.

When I say ‘a growing body of evidence’, I should also point out that there is some history involved as well. The communists of the Soviet Union considered any ideological opposition to their system a mental illness. Locking up dissidents in mental hospitals was not purely cynical. The attitude was and is echoed in the West. The left considers every left leaning politician a genius and every conservative a retard. Evidence to the contrary be damned. Conservatives are consistently pictured as stupid, primitive and backward on top of being selfish, uncaring and immoral. The ‘science’ of it started in the Frankfurt school with Adorno et. al’s ‘Authoritarian Personality’. Adorno’s main contribution was the introduction of the ‘F scale’ where the letter F stands for fascist. The book and the work behind it was heavily criticized for its lax scientific standards, but with its heavy Marxist bias it gave a big push to the Frankfurt school and its ideas.

The ‘growing body of evidence’ I was talking about is mostly based on work related to “The Big Five Personality Traits in the Political Arena.”
The correlation of political attitudes with the personality traits is undeniable and clearly stronger than the correlation with socio-economic status, which would be the Marxist supposition. Evidence seems to show that nature trumps nurture. You can read the whole paper here.
There is a lot of work to be done still; not only on the political aspects of personality, but on the biological nature of the Big Five as well. How much is predetermined and how much is environmental; how much is determined by genetics and how?

While this is the most credible research on the subject, it still does not match the explanatory power of the sociobiological r/K selection theory. Although the core of the theory is about reproductive strategies and the influence of resource availability on them, the lessons learned can be applied to the left-right differences with an exceptional explanatory power. The link above is to my own post on the subject with a long list of references at the end. Simply put, people of the left and right have different brains. A well-developed amygdala promotes ‘K’ selection strategy (the political right), while a well-developed prefrontal cingulate cortex correlates with ‘r’ selection strategy (the political left).

Morality

If we could put aside our differences long enough to assume that our opponents are not evil, we could say that what unites us is our ultimate aim, the creation of a healthy, moral society that empowers its members.

What divides us is our inability to agree on what health, morality, society or empowerment means, and we cannot possibly come to an agreement if we cannot even agree on the fundamental requirements of a dialog: the definition of our terms, the process of the dialog, civility and honesty.

In theory, we should be able to do that. In practice, we are on the brink of civil war and we can blame the left for it. The goal of the left is not to win the debate, but to win the war.
The left has no arguments, all they have at this point is coercion and violence or the threat of it.

Giving up on the dialog is a bad idea. Let me explain why in my next post.

]]>http://zorkhun.com/wp/2017/12/20/autopsy-dialog-part-two/feed/0An autopsy of the dialog – part onehttp://zorkhun.com/wp/2017/12/07/autopsy-dialog-part-one/
http://zorkhun.com/wp/2017/12/07/autopsy-dialog-part-one/#commentsFri, 08 Dec 2017 03:28:06 +0000http://zorkhun.com/wp/?p=2393The title of this post is not a mistake. Even though it is ‘the’ autopsy of some dialogs, I would not share it with you if they were not such perfect examples of what is going on in ‘THE’ dialog between the left and the right. The dialog at this point is pretty much dead, […]

The title of this post is not a mistake. Even though it is ‘the’ autopsy of some dialogs, I would not share it with you if they were not such perfect examples of what is going on in ‘THE’ dialog between the left and the right. The dialog at this point is pretty much dead, and there are many ways to dissect it. Mine is just one attempt.
Doing it feels very much like the situation in the picture above – as if I was dissecting something from another world.

A scary thing happened to me the other day. I hesitated before posting a link to a YouTube video on my own Facebook page.

An old friend from another life whom I reconnected with a few years ago, commented on something I shared on my Facebook page. I shared the video because I found it both funny and informative. It was making fun of the internal divisions of Islam. It is describing what some Muslim groups are saying about some others to justify calling them apostates. …..and we know what is the punishment for apostasy in Islam……..
My friend’s comment was: “I just deleted an acquaintance because of his regular anti-Islamic incitement.”
“Did this qualify as incitement?” – I asked. “Yes”, he answered. The essence of the rest of the short conversation was his last comment: “The threat is not Islam, but religion.”
I was a bit incensed by the thinly veiled warning, but….whatever.

A few days later, I wanted to share a Pat Condell video on my page, but I hesitated in a clear case of self-censorship. Although I agree with everything he says, I would probably try to be more subtle myself. My momentary hesitation quickly turned into indignation. The last time I had to watch whether or how I speak what I think was before the fall of the wall. What scared me was the thought of self-censorship.
And this was just the latest example. In the past few months I had about half a dozen conversations in different parts of the world that bore an eerie resemblance to each other.

I am not the first to notice that something is wrong with the dialog. I am also not the first to suspect that something more is going on than the actual differences of opinions on any particular subject. The pattern is too obvious, too predictable to be accidental. The point of this post, however, is not the nature of those differences, but the nature of our apparent inability to resolve them.

I firmly believe that having constructive discussions are the only civilized way to resolve our differences. I am always ready to have one and hardly ever walk away from it. If I do, I only do it out of desperation, when it is clear, that the conversation isn’t going anywhere, when I cannot get answers to my questions or counter-arguments to the ones I make. I only walk away after the other side disengaged.
As I am trying to hang onto these dialogs, my efforts always bump into the same walls. It is truly fascinating how the same themes, clichés and attitudes repeat themselves across countries, cultures and languages.

What I encountered

Denial of reality

Ignorance (both active and passive)
Having no actual knowledge of the facts behind the subject discussed and
the refusal to answer questions and address concerns when they contradict beliefs and assumptions.

Cognitive dissonance (and the refusal to address it)

Selective memory and selective concerns

Deep, pervasive hypocrisy, misdirection and avoidance

The persistent refusal to take responsibility for past mistakes

Arrogant self confidence

Insulting ad-hominies

Patronizing condescension

The one I find the most difficult to handle is the refusal to answer questions. In almost all of my conversations I feel as if I was in a scene of Buñuel’s “Exterminating Angel.”
I ask an easy but discomforting question and I never get an answer. This is what ends most of my conversations. I asked a genetic scientist a simple question: “according to the present state of our medical knowledge, is it possible to turn a biologically functional female into a biologically functional male, or vice versa?” I never got an answer, not because it is a difficult one, but because it is so obviously simple. The ‘no’ answer would concede my point that gender reassignment is just an elaborate pretension.
Once that determination is made, we could still have a conversation, but the dogma, that it is all just a matter of personal choice, cannot be hold onto. That is why the simple answer cannot be given.

The flat-out rejection of evidence without offering contrary evidence does not help the dialog either. When I say “according to [source ‘A’] only x% of migrants found work within two years and according to the projections of [source ‘B’] only y% will find a job within the next five years”, the answer is simply “That’s not true”. I was told time and time again that my sources are not reliable when I was quoting government statistics.

The left’s ability to live with cognitive dissonance seems to be limitless and it creates a problem with communication if it cannot be addressed. The typical response to pointing out contradictions is to switch the subject.

The second set of problems I encountered (selective memory, hypocrisy and the refusal to accept responsibility) are mostly moral failings. Seeing them tends to fill me with indignation, but they are not the dialog killers.

Neither are the insults, the arrogance and the condescension. I have thick skin and I mostly find them funny. I see them as confirmations of my arguments.

Let’s take a quick look of some of the things I heard and learned from my fruitless discussions:

What I was told

I was told (many times), that I am a racist, even when race was not the subject of the conversation.

I was told that IQ is irrelevant, that it does not even exist or definitely cannot be measured, and even if it did there are definitely no differences in the IQ of ethnic groups, or God forbid, races.

At the same time, I was also told that IQ should not even be measured, because that is racist.

I was told that there are no differences between man and women, but we can differentiate at least sixty genders.

I was told that homosexuality (a behavioral preference) is immutable, but gender can be freely chosen at any time. It is biology in one sentence, socialization in the next, personal choice in the third and I am a racist, homophobe cisgender pig if I ask them to make up their mind which.

I was told that women are just as capable as men, and also that ability has nothing to do with success. If women are not as successful as men, it is because men are oppressing them. Being an oppressor is not a difference, I guess.

I was told that the male/female wage gap is a serious problem despite a number of studies clearly showing that the gap is bogus.

I was told that all cultures are the same; all religions are the same; all races are the same, except, of course, western culture, Christianity and the white race which is responsible for all past, present and future ills of the world and therefore it does not deserve to live.

I was told that there is no reason to worry about Western civilization, because uncontrolled and unlimited third world immigration will not change it. All people are the same, no go zones do not exist and talking about an increase of rape is just propaganda.

I was told that my concerns about government debt are ridiculous.

I was told that standing up for self determination (as in Brexit and the Catalan referendum) are childish and irresponsible.

I was told that principles (such as the rule of law) do not matter because politicians are corrupt anyway (I am still looking for the logic in that one.)

And this is just a small sample, the full list seems to be endless, but not without patterns.

What I have learned

I learned that the left has an exceptional world view. The exceptions, the things that are missing from it are reason, morality and decency. What they DO have is infinite contempt for anybody disagreeing with them.
Anything the left believes, it believes with religious fervor, and once something is a matter of religious dogma, it is beyond the realm of rational discourse.

The left believes that:

Reality is infinitely malleable

People are malleable, and everything they are is the result of socialization.
Except when it is a choice.

Facts can be ignored, evidence doesn’t matter, logic is irrelevant.

The essence of morality is good intentions and the decisions based on them.

The goals based on those intentions justify any means, no matter how unsavory.

Good intentions not only justify any means, they also excuse even predictably bad results.

The only possible causes of the poor results of their well-intentioned plans are opposition to them by evil people or insufficient power and resources to implement them. NEVER a flaw in the plan.

The greatest impediment to create an earthly paradise of equality and a caring society is the political opposition to these noble goals by racist, sexist, xeno- and homophobic fascists that could only be described as deplorable.

What could explain it?

What makes the attempts of any dialog so fascinating is that it is hardly ever about its particular subject.
It is almost always about some righteous delusions of the left on the one hand and defending pragmatism against accusations of bad intentions on the other.
The left sees its ideas, all of them, as moral because they have ‘moral’ aims. When they are confronted with the obvious limitations of their ideas, their reaction is to question the aims of their critics. With an increasing frequency, the questioning is skipped, and nefarious aims are projected onto their opponents.

Leftists refuse to allow logic or contrary evidence to get in the way of their ideas as they believe that the world should be seen not as it is, but the way they wish it to be.
It all started with Marx and his most famous quote:
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways – the point however is to change it.”
With this quote Marx proclaimed the primacy of intentions over (as it turns out) everything.
The second element that makes conversations with the left difficult is also Marxist in origin. The idea that the power of man to change its world is limitless.

What seems to derail every one of the conversations I am getting into is this refusal to accept reality as it is, as something we need to understand, as something that we have precious little power to change. The differences are clear, the question is the cause. What could explain this rift in the public discourse?

I was observing yet another strange discussion conducted seriously on serious subjects by serious people.
Serious philosophical arguments based on painfully obvious fallacies:

Truth can (and should) be absolute

Certain moral principles are universal

The most fundamental human rights are “natural”

Every one of the above statements is wrong.

Truth cannot be absolute and it does not have to be;

Morality is not universal, it cannot and it should not be;
…and

There is absolutely nothing in rights that is natural.

Even a cursory examination should reveal that the generally accepted assumptions about those meanings are questionable. Flawed assumptions lead to flawed conclusions which can lead to bad decisions.

I tried to address the question of absolute truth in some posts (The Nature of Truth part #1, #2 and #3).
I also had a limited discussion of some aspects of universal morality in “Islam and the Golden Rule.”
The one I wish to address here, before returning to the first two, is the silly notion of natural rights.Jeremy Bentham called the notion of natural rights “nonsense upon stilts.”
I also understand that I am arguing against a long list of philosophers and that I am ‘attacking’ the most sacred one of the libertarian sacred cows.

Natural rights

Before going further, stop for a second and think about your own definition. How do YOU define rights?
I could recommend to look at the dictionary definition, but I’m afraid that you will just walk away from it more confused than you were before reading it. The answer should be simple.
Let’s demonstrate this simplicity with some Crusoe philosophy.

How much sense does the notion of rights make to Robinson Crusoe? What are his ‘rights’ in nature?
Does he have the ‘right’ to the land he occupies? At what point does his claim become a right? Did he have the right to salvage things from the sinking ship he was traveling on? Things that were not his property to begin with?
Would the Cannibals who came to ‘his’ island have the right to be there, or was it he, Robinson, who was the trespasser?
In a famous passage of the book, he admonishes the uselessness of money. He has absolutely no use for it in his situation.
Much like money, the very notion of rights makes no sense outside a social context.
‘Rights’ won’t feed you, ‘rights’ won’t protect you from the cold, predators, or in his case: cannibals.

The only thing that can protect him is power. His might is his only ‘right.’
In human societies, might is the power of the collective.
In nature, we can do whatever we can physically do. In a human society (or any, for that matter) we can only do with what the collective allows us to do. We can only talk about rights in terms of human interactions.

Rights must be articulated, understood, codified, protected and applied justly before we can call them rights.

The right you cannot understand or articulate does not exist

Non-sentient, non-self-aware beings cannot have rights. Objects cannot have rights. Animals cannot have rights. Children cannot have rights. Embryos cannot have rights. The environment does not have rights.

The essence of rights is that they must be understood by the person/being who may claim them.
The rights relating to the above examples could be called ‘assumed’ or ‘custodial’ rights. While animals have no way to claim their ‘rights’, a society may impose obligations on its members to treat them ethically, according to standards defined by social consensus. These are not the rights of the animals, but obligations imposed by society on their handlers.

The question of abortion is about the primacy of two conflicting types of rights: a woman’s rights over her own body versus society’s custodial (or proxy) right over the unborn child. Whatever your position on the issue is, it must be understood that the fetus, per se, has no rights. Saying that it does is just political rhetoric. The debate is over custodial rights and their extent.

The right you cannot claim does not exist.

If we cannot physically defend our rights we must delegate their protection. For that we need a mechanism that codifies them (laws), another to claim them (the legal system) and a system to which we can delegate their policing (law enforcement)
Without those, our rights are meaningless.

The right you cannot defend does not exist

I learned this when I was 19. For a short while, I was living on the street. I tried once to sneak into some parked railway cars to sleep, but I was picked up by a policeman at around 3am. He told me that if he ever sees me around his train-station again, he will beat the crap out of me.
– You don’t have the right to do that, – I said.
– Really? – he answered and gave me a slap that made my ear ring for minutes. I got the message.

Our rights, in order to be called ‘rights’, must be applied fairly, objectively and consistently. It does not matter how great our laws are if they are not respected and enforced.

The common element of the above examples are human societies. Rights do not exist without them. Hayek makes the best case for this point in “Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 2: The Mirage of Social Justice” where he describes both justice and morality as something that emerges from communal consensus.
Hayek describes the concept and the process in the abstract, his book is not concerned with cultural differences, even though it is clear that our understanding of rights and obligations is very much culture specific. The Japanese have a much stronger focus on obligations while Muslims obsess over submission and obedience to the ever-shifting demands of their faith.

Universal morality

Like natural rights, universal morals are also nonsense.
The fact that the similar ideas pop up in most cultures, does not make them universal.
They are not inevitable, their interpretation is not necessarily the same, and quite often, they only apply to the ingroup. Some human cultures were all-out cannibals, some only ate members of other tribes. Some claimed to do it for spiritual reasons.
Some were throwing their ‘defective’ babies of the mountains, some were (and still are) stoning their members for behavior they disapprove of.
They all considered their morality universal while also keeping it cultural. It has been argued that Mark 12:31, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” was not meant to be a universal commandment, but what it literally said: love the members of your own tribe.

The dangers of the universalist assumptions

Truth, morals and rights cannot exist outside a social context. They have to be formulated, expressed, understood, accepted and protected. However abstract at times they may appear to be, truth, rights and morality are not pure abstractions, but the living manifestations of the values of cultures.
Postulating our own values as universal is cultural arrogance.
The greatest danger of axiomatic claims is that they push the debate about them into the realm of politics which means the realm of power. Absolutes need no discussion or defense, absolutes know no compromise.

The point of this post is not moral, epistemological or cultural relativism. Quite the contrary.
I firmly believe that:

Some ideas are better than others

Some cultures are better than others

Some religions are better than others

Some political arrangements are better than others

Some political practices are better than others

….and that it is not only possible, but imperative to understand, evaluate and RANK them.
Postulating our culturally defined values as universal frees us from the obligation of doing that.

Calling them universal is the lazy way to justify them, a cowardly way of avoiding their defense.
It is also very dangerous. Arrogating our own values to the level of universality makes us weak and vulnerable. Our values do not have to be universal, only the best there is.

Maybe, at some point in the future we will have a universally shared culture of humanity, but we are not even close to that. Pretending that we are is putting into serious danger the only set of cultural values that may take us there.

I will leave you with an important legal question:

When a tree falls in the forest without a lawyer around, does it still have rights?

]]>http://zorkhun.com/wp/2017/11/26/absolutely-natural-universalities/feed/0The self-castration of the Westhttp://zorkhun.com/wp/2017/09/06/self-castration-west/
http://zorkhun.com/wp/2017/09/06/self-castration-west/#respondWed, 06 Sep 2017 22:41:44 +0000http://zorkhun.com/wp/?p=2375Making the point that Western civilization has lost its balls

In an earlier post, “Cultural castration” I made the point that expecting Islam to moderate itself would be the equivalent of asking it to castrate itself. This is part two of the argument.

Those in the West, who dream about the reformation, and therefore moderation, of Islam, are hoping for a religion pretty much like ours. Non-political and mostly irrelevant.
The neo-communists, in their infinite arrogance think that they will be able to control it once their shared goal, the destruction of Western civilization, is accomplished.
Liberals just want to live in the moment, for the moment, hoping that the moment will never go away.
Politicians are in denial about the reality of the Ponzi scheme they created, while the liberal left is too busy compensating for their perceived historic sins to understand that their self flagellation is nothing short of suicide.

Whatever we think of the West, it must be acknowledged that it had to do something right to get where we are now. We are richer, we live longer, better and healthier than anybody in history. Not just the people of the developed world. Everybody. Even people in the most miserable places on the planet have a better life than their great grandparents had.
The world owes its well being to Western civilization.
Yet, the West is in the process of castrating itself, slowly killing everything that made it successful in the first place:

The rule of law and the protection of the rights of the individual

Personal responsibility and a strong civil society

Rationality and humanism

Equal rights

Self-directed individual morality as the foundation for universal morality

Protestant work ethics

….and we could go on to the personality values fostered by the above: individualism, the encouragement of forming one’s own opinions, standing up for our values, curiosity and the drive for discovery, the drive for personal and social improvement and so on.
All of these good things are slowly getting destroyed.

Positive rights are replacing negative ones, individual rights are becoming group privileges.
Personal responsibility is getting replaced by victimhood mentality and civil society by communities of political expediency.
Dogmatic consensus is replacing the scientific method and humanism gives place to socialism.
Equal rights are turning into group rights and the oppressive drive toward equal outcomes.
Universal morality and its free expression is turned into the amorphous blob of postmodernist relativism and oppressive speech-codes of groupthink.

Whatever the causes are, they all are rooted in arrogant complacency and delusional denial.
The complacency of liberalism
The denial of economic realities and
The arrogance of cultural superiority

Complacency

After the fall of communism, Francis Fukuyama declared “The End of History,” asserting that we reached the end of societal evolution. The belief in permanence of the liberal democratic world order prevents Western civilization from the proper assessment of the dangers it may face.
George Friedman’s book, “The Next 100 Years” provides a fascinating glimpse into history and the future of geopolitics, but has no room to discuss technological and demographic disruption, the potential economic collapse of advanced social democracies or civilizational conflicts. In a way similar to Fukuyama’s, it assumes that the world will go on the way it did for the past 100 years.
This otherwise interesting panel discussion at Georgetown University on terrorism and counterterrorism confines the discussion of the problem to politics, intelligence and policing but avoids culture, economy, migration and demography.All of our problems, it seems, are framed within the blinders of particular issues.

Denial

As I pointed out several times already, Western democracies are nearly bankrupt. Socialist welfare states are not sustainable. Immigration will not solve their problems. Trying to accommodate and appease immigrants from incompatible cultures will eventually make the economic problems worse while creating cultural impediments for actual solutions.Socialist economics is slowly pushing us toward the precipice of irreversible decline.

Arrogance

One of the things that always offended me about communists is their condescension. The arrogance of their righteous superiority. I have the same unease looking at the racist overtones of political correctness, multiculturalism and identity politics. The inconsiderate, virtue signaling selfishness. Leftist do not have what it takes to actually understand the issues they claim to care about, but their aggressive indignation is suppressing debate, making it impossible to find actual solutions.

Complacency, denial and arrogance did not just kill the creative dynamism of Western civilisation, it effectively castrated it.

We keep talking about the symptoms of our problems as if they were the causes.
Muslims are not the cause of our problems. Neither are demographics, politics, the economy, immigration, technological disruption, racism, globalization, climate change or any of the particular problems we can think of.

The “West” is not a race. “The West” is not a culture. The “West” is not an ideology.
The West is a civilization, the success story of certain ideas and the actions, attitudes and social arrangements those ideas inspired. Without those ideas, morals and attitudes the West will most certainly fall.

Ideas, attitudes and the cultural self-confidence they inspire are the balls of a civilization.They are the things that give life to a civilization and allow it to propagate itself. Now, in the West, we are effectively cutting them off.

It is true that we are living better than ever, but so were the Romans in 200 AD.
It is true, that we are richer than ever, but so was Venezuela and Zimbabwe 30 years ago.
It is true, that we are more tolerant and inclusive than ever before, but so was Berlin in the 1920s.

]]>http://zorkhun.com/wp/2017/09/06/self-castration-west/feed/0He who pays the piperhttp://zorkhun.com/wp/2017/08/26/he-who-pays-the-piper/
http://zorkhun.com/wp/2017/08/26/he-who-pays-the-piper/#respondSat, 26 Aug 2017 15:47:18 +0000http://zorkhun.com/wp/?p=2369About two months ago I received a forward from a friend with the subject: “Science needs your voice.” Of course it was baloney. They didn’t need my voice, they were asking for my money. The implied assumption is that their voice is my voice, and what science needs is their political advocacy. Both assumptions are […]

About two months ago I received a forward from a friend with the subject: “Science needs your voice.”
Of course it was baloney. They didn’t need my voice, they were asking for my money. The implied assumption is that their voice is my voice, and what science needs is their political advocacy. Both assumptions are questionable.
I don’t think they would give a lab-rat’s ass for my voice, but I will make it heard anyway.

I never knew that science was about “evidence-based decision making.” Or that it was about decision making at all. I always thought that science was about understanding and explaining the world, but never mind the Bullspeak. There are more important questions at hand. Who does this organization represent? What does their representation mean? Does science have any interest? Can it have any? Can we equate the interest of science with that of scientists and their financial interest?

I answered the sender with a question:
“What do you think my position is, and what is the argument behind it?”
I asked the question hoping to start a conversation, but I did not get an answer. I repeated the question a few more time in subsequent exchanges, but eventually gave up, understanding that I will never get it.

The background of the question and the original appeal to support ‘evidence-based decision making’ was an attempt to set me on the righteous path, to support climate change science, gender identity science and other, purely evidence based scientific endeavors. Especially in the ‘anti-science’ age of Trump.

Now I could easily go on for the rest of this post talking about the AAAS. What they are doing right, what they are doing wrong; how hopelessly political and self-serving they are, how most (95% +) of their directors and advisors are dependent for their very livelihood on the advocacy work of the organization. They are not impartial advocates of science. Just check their web-site and form your own opinion. Check their governance page, look at their finances and browse their policy positions.
I could focus on them, but AAAS is not the point.

I could, at an equal length, talk about the libertarian position on government financed science, the immorality of using tax dollars to do politicised science, but that is not the point either. Not entirely, anyway. On the other hand, before I continue, I should spell out what my position actually is:

I would never support political pimps (a.k.a. lobbying organizations) such as the AAAS.

If it was in my power, I would eliminate any kind of government involvement in science, arts and education.

I would do that because I care, not because I don’t. I believe that we would have better (and possibly even more) scientific research without the corrupting effect of politics.

The above is obviously debatable, but that is the point. Science is important and we should make evidence based decisions about it. We should understand how science and scientists function, how scientific advances are made, what sort of political, economic and cultural environment is the most conducive to scientific productivity, and so on. We could also ask:

How much science do we actually need and how do we know how much we need? Is more science always better? What kind of science do we need the most? Does government involvement create better science? Does it create more?

My answer is a simple libertarian one: let the market and society decide how much and what kind of science we need. Let civil society pay for it.

The real concern about government funded science is corruption. Not the obvious kind, like the one you would expect from government construction contracts, but a subtle one, the kind that corrupts the principles of scientists. We have scary examples of this happening around us.

While some fields are relatively immune to politics (physics, astronomy, mathematics, material sciences, etc.), many are highly susceptible to political influence. Medical science, pharmacology, environmental science, energy research, and every single one of the social sciences can be easily corrupted by politics.

To understand the degree to which a branch of science is corruptible, we only need to reflect on the quote on Marx’s tombstone:
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point however is to change it.”Marx subjugated philosophy to politics, his modern-day followers want to subjugate science to it as well.
Every politician has at least a bit of the Marxist attitude, every politician claims to want to change the world. They just need our money to do it.
Science still has a fairly high degree of respectability and the trust of society which politicians are all too ready to exploit. Money always come with strings attached, the question is how strong those strings are and how dependent a scientific project is on any one of them. Government funding has a tendency of crowding out other funding alternatives.
Any hooker can tell you that having one rich John is better than dealing with 20, but it is also true that the one has far more power over her than any of the twenty would.
What the actual goals of politicians are does not even matter. Most of the time they are mundane, like having the support of the science community or endorsement of organizations such as the AAAS, but quite often it can be more demanding.

Science and politics have different aims and methods. Science should be, and most often is, about the non-compromising search for ever better understanding, the evolution of knowledge through thesis, antithesis and synthesis; theory, observation and analysis; concept, test and proof.
The moment it ventures into policy prescription, it betrays its elementary mission of objectivity.
Politics can never be free of ideology, but science can, and should be.

Politics is about power, actions, decisions and compromises, in search for an acceptable consensus. Ideology gives direction to politics. Still, politics is primarily about power, but power needs legitimacy.
The practical aim of politics is the legitimization of political power.
Politicians don’t give a damn about the poor, but claiming that they do will legitimize robbing one half of society to pay off the other for their support.
Politicians don’t give a damn about the transgender, but claiming that they do will legitimize the atomization and control of the individual.
Politicians don’t give a damn about the climate, but claiming that they do can give them enormous amount of power. Nothing legitimizes a political power grab as well as “scientific consensus”. It is almost like the divine grace that gave power to the kings of old.

Politicians can use science to support their ideological aims. All they need to do is to finance scientists and their research projects selectively.

If the official dogma of the state is that we are all equal and all differences are the result of socialization, then much money will be given to projects aiming to prove the dogma and little to none researching innate differences. Certain hot political issues will get priority.
At the height of the AIDS epidemic, the money spent on AIDS research was proportionally ten times more then what was spent on more prevalent, more deadly diseases.
When it comes to researching gender dysphoria, all the money is going into finding better ways to improve gender reassignment surgery and none into researching the wisdom and the effects of doing it in the first place.
When it comes to medical research and pharmacology, most research money is directed toward patentable products and procedures. Alternatives are not only ignored, but actively supressed. Just read “The Cancer Industry”
With climate science, the degree of corruption is unparalleled.
The same person who sent me the appeal of the AAAS for some money to have my voice heard, knowing what an evil climate change denier I am, and with a hope to open my eyes, sent me a document to use as an evidence-based science reference. Few things exemplify the problem better than this 673 pages long “Climate Science Special Report” of the Paris conference. It is shamelessly political, disgracefully used and badly tainted science to serve nakedly political ambitions. The only thing I found evidence for in it is that money corrupt just as badly as power.If we can call the AAAS the pimps of the prostitution of science, then we could call climate scientists its ten-dollar crack whores.

Power corrupts. Politics corrupt. Money corrupt. Subjugating science to politics is very dangerous.
The corruption in climate science is so bad, that it could jeopardize the credibility of science and scientists in general. Respect for public institutions are already waning. Politicians, lawyers and journalists have lost most of the respect they had fifty years ago. Scientists are on the verge of losing the public’s trust and respect as well.
In several international surveys, climate change ranks dead last as a public concern, despite the political and “scientific” hype. To restore the public’s trust, scientists must fiercely fight for their independence and the integrity of their discipline.

I am a geek at heart. A big fan of science and technology, science fiction and futurism.
But I am also a libertarian who understands the corrupting power of politics.
We have good reasons to be concerned about the future and the integrity of science.
This was the point I wanted to make in the conversation that never happened.

We need to have that conversation, and in the end, I think science does need my voice. If you agree, help me make it heard by sharing this post widely.

I met a truly caring person at a dinner party, someone with the best of intentions and a militant attitude about her moral sensibilities. At times, I had the feeling that she was on a constant lookout for things I may say that she can get indignant about.
I had no doubt about her sincerity, I had no doubt that her heart was in the right place.
On whatever subject we discussed, I had no doubt that she took the position she did because she considered it to be the most moral position available. It was clear from her attitude that she would consider any alternative position not just wrong, but outright immoral.
I found myself, as at many other times talking to left-wingers, in front of a dilemma: which aspect should I address: reason or morality? Logic or emotions? How can I step back to talk about the underlying problem, the fact that compassion, feelings and good intentions are NOT moral if the actions they lead to do more harm than good?The morality of our actions should only be judged by their results, not by the intentions motivating them. All too often, the left uses its good intentions as an excuse to explain away the harm they do.

About a day later I discovered the latest social media tempest about the censorship at Patreon, Youtube and Google. Censorship should be the subject of a separate discussion, but the response of Jack Conte, the CEO of Patreon trying to explain his decision provided me with the perfect example to illustrate the immorality of compassion. I could use any number of examples to make the same point, but I will stick to the one that was the subject of both conversations.

My hostess and Jack Conte were both absolutely clear in their support of the illegal migration into Europe. Both considered the morality of their position unquestionable.
I could question the sanity, point out the dangers of the Muslim invasion and the cultural collapse it foreshadows, but let’s focus on just the morality.

The case of the pro-migrants is simple:People are suffering! Can’t you understand that?????
We live in an affluent world. The rest of the world is suffering. We have a moral obligation to help them.

We can probably agree with the first point and for the sake of the argument, let’s say that we agree with the other two as well. That still leaves us with the question: HOW? What is the best way to help? What is the most sensible way to help? What is the most moral way to help? I discussed the facts around this issue in an earlier post: Dear Frau Merkel. I will focus here only on the egregiously immoral aspects.

The immorality of lawlessness

Many of the migrants going to Europe are coming from failed states, where raw power rules, not the law. Even the ones who are not coming from war-zones and total anarchy, are coming from corrupt, dysfunctional states.
Whatever we think of the causes of the success of modern Western civilization are, we must find ‘the rule of law’ to be one of them. The ‘refugees’ are coming from lawless places, supposedly to find safety in a place where the law rules, not criminals, warlords and tyrants.
Yet, what is the first message they get from us???? That we do not give a shit about our own laws! That we welcome criminals. We are demonstrating to them that our laws are meaningless, that our borders are meaningless. That it is OK to lie about their identity and to misrepresent their age to get more benefits. After such introduction, how can we expect them to respect the rest of our laws? Most will not even notice, as they came from places with little respect for laws. As I said before, if Ms. Merkel wanted a million immigrants, she could have issued a million visas. But she did not. She set us all on the path of lawlessness with these first steps toward the kind of societies these ‘refugees’ were running away from. With her actions, she repudiated a foundational principle of our civilization.Where is the morality in that?

Jack Conte of Patreon and his “Trust and Safety Team” based their censorship decisions on what he calls Manifest Observable Behaviour (MOB for short (I am sure the implication is accidental)). He observed Lauren Southern actually trying to STOP criminal activity in the Mediterranean. The boat she was on was trying to stop human trafficking, it was trying to stop people smugglers. The fact that they call themselves NGOs does not change the fact that they were engaged in criminal activities. Conte’s argument is that trying to stop human trafficking is endangering the lives of the humans trafficked.
He is in full support of a certain kind of criminal activity and has the power to penalize someone who disagrees with him. But he maintains that the decision was NOT political.
Still, he has a point. Let’s examine it.

The immorality of risk

As I pointed out in an earlier post, the Australians had a serious illegal migration problem at the beginning of the decade. After they made it clear to potential ‘refugees’, that risking their lives is pointless, the accidental deaths went from a few hundred per year to ZERO. A simple political decision that said a resolute NO to illegal immigration saved hundreds of lives. The problem in the Mediterranean is an order of magnitude higher. What we are in fact telling the people of the world is this: If you risk your life on the seas, pay the smugglers, break the laws and are lucky enough to get through, you will be welcome in Western European welfare paradise. Support for this grossly irresponsible, murderous policy did cost 3,770 (Manifestly Observable) lives in 2016 and 2,408 lives so far in 2017. The only way to save these lives is NOT supporting the policy that led to their loss; by doing exactly what the Australians did. That would save lives. Not being trafficked is what saves lives, not the encouragement and support of people traffickers. Jack Conte’s “Manifestly Observable Behavior” of supporting deadly dangerous criminal behaviour that manifestly costs human lives and his efforts to silence voices opposed to such crimes makes him personally responsible for the casualties.Where is the morality in endangering people’s lives with ‘manifestly’ predictable consequences?

The immorality of expectations

Europe has a fairly solid record on immigration by now. We know what works and what doesn’t. We know which immigrant groups are likely to succeed and which ones are not.
We are on the brink of the second industrial revolution that will result in significant changes in the labour market. We have no idea how we are going to handle it. What we do know, is that more low skill jobs will disappear.
Importing uneducated, unskilled, illiterate millions with hopelessly low average IQ is not doing a favour to anybody. Especially not to the immigrants. We are setting them up for failure. We can predict based on available data on existing migrants from similar backgrounds how well this batch will fare. The future is not bright. Most of these immigrants will never get off welfare, they will stay not just unemployed, but mostly unemployable. It is inevitable that they will eventually be full of resentment and hostility toward the cultures that gave them refuge. They could have had much better chances to a meaningful life back in their own culture.Where is the morality in degrading people’s lives? In setting them up for failure?

The immorality of tax slavery

As I pointed out in my last post, “There is not a single country in the OCDE with their finances in the black.”
On top of their average debt standing over 106% of GDP, they have a combined $78 trillion in pension liabilities.
Western Europe is BROKE and with its sharply declining birth rate, it has absolutely no way to pay its debt and to meet its financial obligations. The point of this mass migration is to get enough young taxpayers into Europe to pay for the benefits promised to Europe’s aging and mostly childless population. Since they do not have children to inherit their debt, they want to pass it on to the immigrants. What the immigrants see is the welfare benefits. What they don’t is that at some point they will have to pay it back, along with the debt of their ‘generous’ hosts!
I must agree with Mark Steyn who finds it unlikely that the migrants will do that willingly, but that is just the stupidity. We are talking about morality here.This is a new form of slavery! What is so goddamn moral about it?

The immorality of waste and hidden agendas

Helping refugees close to the place which they were displaced from makes all the sense in the world. The idea behind it is that after the resolution of the conflict, they can return home. They would not have to deal with the stress of leaving their culture, and staying close would make it much easier for them to return home. Helping them within the region is also far cheaper and far more effective.Helping refugees close to their homes cost 1/10th of what it would cost in Europe.
Nobody has limitless resources. The promoters of unbridled immigration to Europe don’t seem to be concerned about the wastefulness of their efforts. Not even trying to get the most out of their efforts to help makes the whole enterprise suspect. Is it really about help? Could there be a hidden agenda such as creating irreversible political changes on the continent?Where is the morality in that?

As I mentioned in the beginning, any leftist policy could be subjected to a similar analysis. Any leftist, socialist policy can be described as either or both stupid and immoral. The question then should be: when does stupid become immoral?
Let’s give the benefit of the doubt to my hostess and Jack Conte. Let’s suppose that they are not evil, they just don’t get it. Let’s assume that they are just incapable of seeing the moral arguments I presented above.
How can I tell to these genuinely nice, well meaning people, that the policies they support on this topic suggest that they are racist, murderous sociopaths? How could I shake them up to make them see the immorality of their position?
How can I explain to them that unexamined compassion seldom translates into moral action?
That good intentions are not enough? That the only measure of morality are the outcomes of our actions and the results of our policies? That compassion and righteous virtue signaling is NEVER enough?

How can I do that and still expect to be invited to their next dinner party?

If you wish to read more on the subject, here are some of my earlier posts on it:

I wish I could claim authorship of the title of this post, but I shamelessly plucked it from an Economist article: “In defence of the childless.” The July 29th issue has another article (The rise of childlessness) to reinforce the “there is nothing to see here” message.

Although his name was not mentioned, the first article was centered around a meme Mark Steyn introduced a few weeks ago in his post: “The Biggest Issue of our Time” pointing out how the childless leaders of Europe are indicators of their nations easily foreseeable future.

Mark finishes his speech with the following:

“Now you might disagree with me and if so have at it!
Tell me why, tell me that I’m wrong; Tell me where I’m going wrong but don’t do what the media do which is to react to the biggest story of our time, the demographic extinguishing of the people who built the modern world, and they don’t even write about it.
If there are two sides to this story then let’s hear the other side but right now it’s the biggest story of our time and no one is telling it.”

Indeed, there is no conversation and there is a reason why. The Economist presented another side, but I’d say there are more than two sides to the story.
The Economist answered Mark’s question, it spelled out its position: there is nothing to see, nothing to worry about. Anyone with a concern must be a kook or a racist right-winger.

Few things could indicate more clearly that we have a serious problem than some Economist articles trivializing them.

Mark’s side

….is fairly straightforward: The West is a decadent, declining culture that lost its will to live as evidenced by its sharply declining birth rate and its political reaction to it. Its leaders are either clue- and careless or cynical opportunists. Mass immigration from grossly incompatible and often outright hostile cultures with aggressively high birth rates will replace the population of the Western world effectively eliminating western civilization. Politicians and the media are doing a great disservice to their people by not taking this problem seriously.

His question is not WHY is it happening, but why can’t we even talk about it?
The answer to the second question may be revealed by the answer to the first which can be any or all of the following.

My (a)side

Let me start with pointing out that declining birth rates aren’t necessarily a problem. Birth rates can indeed go up and down, cultures ebb and flow. Although through most of history, those ebbs and flows were results of natural disasters or political strife and not declining birth rates, it could be argued, that left to its own devices, without external interference, cultures could recover from low birth rates.
The population of the planet was below a billion ‘till 1800. It is now over 7.5 billion, almost tripled in my lifetime. The growth has slowed down and it is projected to stop at around 12.2 billion.
But who is to say what’s the optimal population size? Especially considering our increasing life span. The planet can easily feed 12 billion people but could exist just as happily with 5 or 3.

Low birthrates are the symptoms, not the causes of cultural decline. The causes are the ever-expanding role of politics and the state, the centralization of power, the welfare state, the entitlement Ponzi schemes, over-regulation, over-taxation, feminism, environmentalism and cultural Marxism, to name just a few. In a traditional, free society with a minimal government, a low birthrate would not be a problem. In a free world, personal responsibility, family and civil society would make birth rate and population size irrelevant.

#1 – the Malthusian/environmentalist side

Every time we think that Malthusianism has died, like Frankenstein’s monster, it gets jolted back to life.The limits to growth, The Population Explosion, Silent Spring are just the most prominent examples.
We are told that the planet has too many people and the way to save it is not having children. The environmental movement put a serious guilt trip on several generations by now. The self-loathing message did get across, birth rates are plummeting. The environmentalists were successful convincing the developed world that humanity is the problem. They only forgot to tell that to the Muslims and the Africans whom they are actively helping to multiply. Only the Western world is supposed to die, because if it did, we could be close to nature again. Since the ideas and the assumptions of the environmentalists are flawed, they cannot win debates. They can only shout and get violent.

The environmentalists believe that humans are a planetary disease and cannot talk about the subject without questioning this most sacred tenets of their faith.

#2 – the Cultural Marxist side

The neo-communist message is the same as the original: equal outcomes, zero sum games. The Marxists of today want the same thing the Marxists of old did: a globalized earthly paradise where everybody is equal, where everybody behaves the same because Marxists believe that we ARE all the same. The Marxists, who by now infiltrated the media, education and government bureaucracies consider multiculturalism, the social safety net and the support and liberation of an ever-expanding list of victim groups as glorious achievements toward their sacred goals: the destruction of the patriarchy, capitalist exploitation and right-wing tribalism.The Marxist cannot talk about it without revealing their agenda, the fact that the issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.

#3 – The political side

Mark likes to refer to a movie that also happened to be one of the favorites of my youth: “If….” It is set in a British boarding school where one of the jobs of the freshmen was to warm up the toilet seats in the unheated washrooms for their elders. He likened that to the way politics works in Western democracies. The only role of conservatives is to keep the seat warm for the socialists. The left-right circus is just a ‘two steps forward one step back’ shuffle on “The Road to Serfdom.” They will not hesitate to set the course for civilizational collapse in the future as long as their actions give them votes in the present.The politicians cannot talk about it without admitting that they are frauds, whose ONLY goal is to increase and perpetuate their power without any actual regard for the constituents they claim to represent.

#4 – The globalist side

Power in a communist state is strictly hierarchical. Structured power is more predictable than democracy. It also works best when it is concentrated. Being a bureaucrat is preferable to being an elected politician. Democracy works best when it is local, but not for the politicians who have to take responsibility for their decisions. Politicians like to have power without responsibility.
They like to be dependent on higher levels of government. Politicians at higher levels like the fact that they cannot be held responsible for the matters of local concerns. It is a blame-exchange game. The ultimate goal of the globalists is a global government with loyal vassals implementing their enlightened plans.The globalists cannot talk about the subject without exposing their totalitarian ambitions, their drive toward making democracy meaningless.

#5 – The Liberal side

In 1992, just three years after the fall of the Berlin wall, Francis Fukuyama declared “The End of History.” The decadent liberals of the West had no reason not to buy the argument and rejoice. With their ever-expanding choices of lattés and early retirement options, they never had it this good. All they have to do is to vote for more. More promises, less ‘austerity’, more deficit spending, more virtue signaling. And they can do all that with supporting their elected politicians in robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Mark says:

“… as Tom Wolfe wrote a few years ago, Europe has essentially climbed out of that stream (…the stream of tradition…) it has broken that compact; it created a perfect euro utopia for the moment and it’s living in the present tense. It’s trying to hold the moment like Goethe’s Faust but it can’t succeed in doing it.”

Liberals cannot talk about the subject without considering the possibility that they may not be able to hold onto the moment, without facing the fact that their selfish hedonism helped creating the problem and their phony altruism is just cowardly hypocrisy.

#6 – The economic side

There is not a single country in the OCDE with their finances in the black.
The OECD average debt is 106% of GDP.
Every developed country suffers from the disease of Keynesian economics. Politicians think “in the long run” hoping that they will not be in office by the time the bills come due. The pension systems are all dependent on new taxes and new taxpayers. The only way to maintain the Ponzi scheme is the constant growth of the tax-base.Politicians cannot talk about demographics and immigration without coming clean on the scam they supported for decades and still do.

#7 – The media side

The greatest impediment to an honest conversation is the media’s neo-communist, cultural Marxist bias.
Every one of the problems discussed above were created with the media’s support, with their active cheering for ideas that history has proven disastrous time and time again. The media is the enabler of all the bad ideas.Just like the cultural Marxists, the media will never admit responsibility and would use any debate to double down on the bad ideas…

The real scandal

Each of the above would deserve a discussion on its own.
Any member of the above-mentioned groups is complicit in the process that led to the problem we need to discuss. Every defender of the welfare state, the social safety net, profligate spending, identity politics and uncontrolled immigration bears some degree of the responsibility for the cultural suicide of the West.
The common elements behind the support of the above ideas are self-interest, cynicism, dogmatic beliefs and wishful ignorance.

Mark Steyn is bemoaning the absence of an honest discussion of “The Biggest Issue of our Time”, but how can we possibly expect an honest conversation about the issue with the people who created the problem in the first place? Honest talks would go against their most sacred beliefs, expose their immorality, stupidity and selfishness. It would require some self-reflection, taking responsibility for past actions, the re-evaluation of harmful ideas, understanding and confirmation of our cultural identity and so on. An honest and rational discourse is not possible. Anybody suggesting that it can be a realistic expectation must be kidding.

To paraphrase Kyle Reese of “The Terminator”

“The neo-coms are out there. They can’t be bargained with, they can’t be reasoned with. They don’t feel pity or remorse and will absolutely not stop ever, until the Western civilization is dead”

I got into an exchange with a Muslim professor of a Canadian university recently in an internet discussion group. He is a strong and vocal opponent of ‘Islamism’. It was that exchange that led to this post and the questions I will discuss in it.

Can there be a moderate Islam? I don’t believe so, but the questions at this point in history is not just about Islam but Western civilization as well. The question is all about balls, about having them and losing them, figuratively speaking, of course.

The two questions we have to answer are:

Can Islam be reformed and still be called Islam?
and

Can Western countries embrace Muslims without endangering the very foundations of their cultural existence?

Can either change without losing its identity?

We can start by asking what exactly does the word ‘Islamism’ mean. Isn’t it simply radical Islam or Muslim terrorism without using the ugly words ‘radical’ and ‘terrorism’?
It may also simply mean: taking Islam seriously. Or literally, which, for most Muslims, is the same thing. (Mark Steyn is discussing his aversion toward the term in this article.)

The voices in Europe asking for the reformation of Islam are getting louder in direct proportion with Islam’s attempts to assert itself.
There is no altruism behind these voices, just a sense of self preservation. People don’t care much about Islam, they just want it to stop encroaching on their lives. They just want Islam to leave them alone, to respect their laws, their societies and their individual rights. They want Islam to be like their own religions. Secular with comfy traditions, churches with nice music and pretty pictures, something that we can embrace or ignore at our leisure, something that is there when we need it, but leaves us alone if we find it bothersome. The voices that call for the reformation of Islam want it NOT to be Islam. The way Christianity isn’t really what it used to be either. But how realistic is this expectation? Can Islam reform itself? Can there be moderate Islam?”

Reformed Islam

Before we can answer that question whether Islam can be reformed, we have to understand what the essence of Islam is.
I think we should be able to agree on the three most fundamental elements:

Militant monotheism (There is no God but God)

Totalitarianism (There is no law but God’s law – Sharia)

Imperialism (There should be no country but God’s country – the Caliphate)

Can a reformed Islam, one that accepts religious pluralism be still called Islam?There is no God but God is the most fundamental tenet of the faith. Any other faith is an affront to Muslims. Showing respect for other religions is antithetical to their most basic belief.

Can non-political Islam, Islam without sharia still be called Islam?
Anywhere Muslims go, any place where their numbers allow them to form communities, they demand the wholesale acceptance of their laws and custom. The so called ‘moderate’ Muslims of the west are on an unending quest for ever more accommodation, all in accordance with the demands of Sharia. Many outright reject the legitimacy of the laws of their host countries. Can Islam really accept the legitimacy of laws other than sharia and still be called Islam?

Can a reformed Islam retain its aspirations for world conquest and domination?
Hussein Aboubakr points out the following in his Prager U video Where Are the Moderate Muslims? (@ 0:55):

“Growing up, I was told, among many other things, the following: That every day that passes on the Islamic nation without a caliphate is a sin.
That the failures and miseries of the Muslim world started the moment we Muslims gave up conquests and wars against the infidels.”

Imperialism has always been an essential part of Islam. The three dominant ethnic groups in the middle east (Turks, Arabs and Persians) are already in an increasing competition to determine which will become the center of the next caliphate. The essence of Muslim immigration to the West is all about conquest, and this time it won’t be just Al-Andalus, but Al-Götaland, Al-Bavaria and Al-Normandie as well. Every no-go-zone in Europe is Ribat, a foothold, a conquered corner of Dar al Islam. Can Muslims truly integrate and still call themselves Muslims?

As far as the world is concerned, these three are the true pillars of Islam, but when we are talking about reform, we could also ask:

The problem with the Muslim promise of peace and harmony once they got rid of the infidels and the apostates is that they will always find new apostates and hypocrites. Muslim history is rife with sectarian conflicts in which the moderates, the reformists were always the ones who ended up dead.

There is no way to ‘moderate’ Islam, just as there is no way to ‘moderate’ any religion.
It is like asking communism or fascism to be moderate. Successful religious reformations tend to go in the conservative, fundamentalist direction.

Those who ask for the reformation of Islam do not want to reform it, just tame it. They want to turn Muslims into, nice little folks with their quaint little customs, headdresses and superstitions but who can play nice within the rules set by the grownups. This is what castration is, this is what castration does. Turns men into harmless children. Just like we did with the natives of North America.

Asking for the reform of Islam is just virtue signaling.
Asking for the reform of Islam is not taking it seriously.
I can perfectly understand why the radicals find this condescending and patronizing arrogance insulting. I can understand why ANY Muslim would find it insulting.

The answer to the ultimate question is no, Islam cannot be reformed. Not without castrating it, not without taking away its essence.

Islam may fade into irrelevance, but for that, they should be left alone.

Islam may collapse into insignificance just like Catholicism did in Quebec.

Islam may be beaten into submission, just like it was in colonial times and in Soviet Russia, but that would require political will.

The ONLY RESPECTFUL WAY of dealing with Muslims is beating them into submission. Yes, that means beating them into Islam. Submission is not just the name, but the very essence of Islam, that is the only thing Muslims understand. If they wish to fight, we should fight them. If they wish to die for their faith, we should help them. For those, on the other hand, who are ready for true moderation, meaning a break from Islam, we should be ready to open our arms.

The ONLY HUMANE WAY of dealing with Muslims is the encouragement of apostasy. We should embrace the apostates. We should celebrate them. We should protect them. We should make it clear to all of them that our only enemy is evil ideology and evil actions. Not the people who had the misfortune of being oppressed by them.

]]>http://zorkhun.com/wp/2017/05/27/cultural-castration/feed/0Why we could hate youhttp://zorkhun.com/wp/2017/05/24/why-we-could-hate-you/
http://zorkhun.com/wp/2017/05/24/why-we-could-hate-you/#commentsWed, 24 May 2017 21:30:47 +0000http://zorkhun.com/wp/?p=2318Responding to an article printed in the English language magazine of ISIS called "Why we hate you and why we fight you."

Issue # 15 of Dabiq magazine printed in 1437 Shawwal (that’s July 2016 for you dumb kuffars) has an article titled: “Why We Hate You & Why We Fight You” written “to clarify to the West in unequivocal terms – yet again – why we hate you and why we fight you.”You can read the full article here, but here is a quick summary of the points made:

We hate you because you are disbelievers (not Muslims)

We hate you because you are secular

We hate you because you are disbelievers (atheist)

We hate you for your transgressions against our religion (mocking, blasphemy, insults)

We hate you for your crimes against Muslims (wars)

We hate you for invading our lands

The list ends with the following point:

“What’s important to understand here is that although some might argue that your foreign policies are the extent of what drives our hatred, this particular reason for hating you is secondary, hence the reason we addressed it at the end of the above list. The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizya and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you. No doubt, we would stop fighting you then as we would stop fighting any disbelievers who enter into a covenant with us, but we would not stop hating you.”

Quite clearly spoken. No ambiguity. It is truly a wonder how so many leftists, politicians and the media cannot get it. Muslims hate us for one reason and one reason only: We are NOT Muslims.
We are not like them and they hate everything that demonstrates that difference. This is a position that cannot be argued with, as short of conversion to Islam, nothing is accepted as an argument. It is not possible to reason with an unreasonable demand. For a true Muslim, there is no reason, no morality, no argument outside of Islam.

It could be argued that this is not the position of Islam, but only of ISIS and its radicals. Many Muslim apologists make just that claim. Fundamentalists in turn call the self titled moderates hypocrites and apostates.
I tend to agree with the radicals in that their interpretation of Islam is the truest to the original intentions of the prophet. The following arguments, therefore, are aimed at them, the author(s) of the article, the true, fundamentalist Muslims.

Why we could hate you

We could hate you just to be equitable. An eye for an eye. The language of hatred, violence, brutality and intolerance is the only language you seem to understand. Maybe, if we hated you back, we could ‘communicate’.

We could hate you for being brutal, primitive savages. What else, indeed, could we do watching the stoning, beheading, mutilating, live burning, children brutalizing videos you put on Youtube? Your savagery is a disgrace to humanity.

We could hate you for being parasites.
You’re the parasites of history and now you are the parasites of the West. There is not a single place or time in history that Islam made better. With brutal savagery, you took over civilizations and slowly turned them into primitive wastelands.
You are no better today. Muslims tend to be a serious financial drain in the countries of Europe.
You demand, but offer nothing of value in return.

We could hate you for your ingratitude and hypocrisy.Without us, you would be nowhere. You are using Western weapons, move around in Western vehicles. You use mobile phones, the internet and YouTube to spread your messages. Without access to Western technology, without the West buying your resources (which you cannot even get out of the ground without Western technology), entertaining your goats is about the only thing you would be capable of doing.

We could hate you for trying to destroy our civilization.
Not only are you endangering western civilization but the very survival prospects of humanity on the planet. We could hate you for the danger you represent. The middle-East is where the Garden of Eden used to be. When the Jews took it back from Muslims who ruined it, it was a wasteland. Now, that the Jews restored it to its former glory, Muslims want to destroy it again. If Muslims take over the world, they will turn it into a wasteland.

We could hate you for your stupid beliefs.
Islam, by any measure, is the most primitive, violent, intolerant and unforgiving religion in existence today. I challenge anybody to name one that is worse. Although it comes very close, even communism is better. None of that would be a problem, if you would keep your beliefs to yourself, but you don’t.

I could probably name a whole set of other reasons why we could hate you, but they do not matter. What matters, is that despite these very good reasons, we do not hate you. Unlike you, we are not filled with rage and hatred.

Why we don’t hate you

We don’t hate you because we are stronger than youThe power of our culture is the power of its attitudes, the power of its knowledge, skills and achievements. With the exception of primitive brutality, there is not a single field of human endeavors where you can compete with us. Not physical, not mental, not cultural. In a fair competition, Muslims are just not a match. The Jews can wipe the floor with Muslims on any field, at any time.

We don’t hate you because we are better than youWe don’t hate you because our culture is NOT a culture of hate and anger.
Unlike your prophet who was preaching hate, ours, Jesus Christ, was preaching love.
Contrary to your claims, your God is ANYTHING but al-Rahman al-Rahim, all merciful and all forgiving. Of all the Gods I know of, he is the least forgiving, by far the angriest, by far the most intolerant. Just like you.
By contrast, Jesus was preaching love, forgiveness and turning the other cheek. The Martyrs of Christian history died professing their faith, not murdering the innocent hoping to get some pussy in haven as a reward. Many Christian Martyrs died forgiving their murderers.

We don’t hate you, we pity you.
You hate us because deep down you know how worthless your faith and culture makes you. We understand that you are victims of your own stupid, intolerant and bloodthirsty ideology. We understand that your women and children are victims too.

We don’t hate you because you are not worthy.Hate is a sentiment of weakness and inferiority. People hate those who have power and control over them. Hate is often a sign of an inferiority complex. We don’t hate you because you are not worthy. At best, we have contempt for you.

We don’t hate you because we do not take you seriously.
This is where the West is divided. People like me, take you, and the existential threat you represent, very seriously. Unfortunately, the other half of the Western world believes that you can become like us and start behaving like us. They believe that you can become tolerant, that you can grow out of your primitive culture, that you will learn to appreciate ours. They believe that you can give up the basic tenets of your religion, jihad, sharia and the drive for the caliphate.
They believe that you will want to be part of our culture, that you will WANT to assimilate.

Every new terrorist atrocity gives us a new excuse to hate you, yet with every one of those atrocities we just demonstrate yet again that we do not.

Our mistake is not to take you seriously.
Yours is to think that this is a sign of weakness.